Property, But Whose Rights?
I was sitting in class today and we were discussing property rights. During the discussion a few thoughts and more questions came to mind that I thought I’d share.
Okay, so we have this thing called property. What does that mean? What does it really mean to “own” property. Oh I know the legal definition and the bundle of rights that are legally enforceable on a given piece of property, but I’m asking in the conceptual sense. Does owning property mean that I can do absolutely anything I want to on it? Could I, for instance have ten dogs on my half acre residential lot that bark all night? Does it matter what my neighbors think? Somehow I get the feeling that even some of the more ardent of libertarians would probably say no, there are reasonable limitations to how an individual can use their property. People can do what they want so long as it doesn’t harm another person or interfere with their rights to enjoy their property.
The old saying goes “your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins” and that’s generally a sound principle. It’s in balancing your right to swing against my right to not be hit that government generally comes in (and I swear Tom if you talk about God granting property rights or government being evil I’m bursting a vein, this isn’t about government) as an intermediary and we have that messy court stuff. At the founding of this country private property rights were generally understood in the negative; property was the ability to stop others from interfering in your enjoyment and use of it. Today that’s not quite so true. Granted a good number of us think this way, but that’s not the way things work. If that were true we wouldn’t have industrial pig farms because the stench is so overpowering that it makes the areas nearby virtually uninhabitable.
The problems of “do no harm” compound when we are talking about things that are not land or even the long term health of land. Land can be damaged pretty badly by poor management or short-term thinking. Iowa has a good 50 years or so of topsoil left - but then what? What about rivers, air, lakes, the ocean? We don’t really have property rights to air and water, but if we did what would that look like? How do you own water or air rights? How would we remedy harms to those rights? I could just imagine a polluter having to buy the right to pollute from millions of property owners from Illinois down to Indiana to have a source of pollution in Wisconsin. This sounds a bit extreme, but we currently (and into the future will) reside somewhere between absolute unregulation and this extreme uberprivatization. What’s the right line? What about multi-source pollution? If there are millions of cars in LA that produce smog and my kid gets asthma complications that can be fairly traced to the smog to whom do I turn for redress?
I’m perfectly serious here, we have a certain conception of property rights and that influences all of the questions I’ve posed. A lot of these questions are directed towards the more libertarian-oriented here, but they’re generally open. I’m not really trying to push a value judgment, but rather asking where the balance should fall. Basically what is property and how does it apply to some of the hypothetical scenarios I’ve tossed up?
Comment by Allan Niemerg on 9 November 2007 at 10:59 pm:
I don’t know, but I bet it has something to do with Ron Paul.
Comment by Hanno on 10 November 2007 at 2:20 pm:
Actually this was directed at the libertarians out there mostly, I just didn’t want to state it so obviously.
Comment by JayBandit on 12 November 2007 at 1:33 pm:
Interestingly enough, I found out when I bought my house in PA that I in fact do not own the right to the land underneath my home. This is because there is quite a bit of coal underneath the soil in various places, and if they determine it is cost effective to mine beneath my home some day; they can go right ahead and I have no right to complain…
Comment by kofi the what are your answers, hanno? on 12 November 2007 at 11:56 pm:
This was never answered so I’ll turn the question around.
Hanno: How do you define it? If you’re having a barbecue and the smoke from your grill is drifting to a neighbors yard, do they have the right to make you cease your activities? If after the grilling you sit in your yard with family and friends, listening to music that can be heard on the next patio, do they have the right ot mka eyou cease your activities? What if after that party you went back with a sexy young lady to her apartment and engaged in some vocal activities which woke your neighbors up? Do they have the right to make you cease (or at least quiet) your activities?
Property is a vague, abstract thing. It’s a strange social contract on par with “if you won’t kill me, I won’t kill you.” Maybe “social contract” and “on par with” aren’t entirely correct… maybe the it’s more correct to say property is the fatal flaw in the social contract, and the ultimate reason we kill.
Comment by Hanno on 13 November 2007 at 11:06 am:
“ow do you define it? If you’re having a barbecue and the smoke from your grill is drifting to a neighbors yard, do they have the right to make you cease your activities? If after the grilling you sit in your yard with family and friends, listening to music that can be heard on the next patio, do they have the right ot mka eyou cease your activities? What if after that party you went back with a sexy young lady to her apartment and engaged in some vocal activities which woke your neighbors up? Do they have the right to make you cease (or at least quiet) your activities?”
Fair enough. I was going more for an ought, not an is, so I’ll answer with that in mind. Property ought to have a reasonable use standard (which I recognize it largely does) for the setting in which it is being used. So I can have ten dogs on a five acre farm no problem, but probably not on a half acre lot because of the nuisance.
Hm. Barbecue. It depends on how much smoke we’re talking and whether it would rise to the level of a nuisance. Same goes for music, and moaning. If it’s four in the afternoon and the neighbor can turn up the volume on their TV a little and largely ignore it then they should probably just let me have my fun. If it’s so loud that the walls rattle and they can’t hear normal conversation that’s going to weigh on the other side. Alternatively if it’s 3 a.m. and we’re screaming or listening to music then it’s a reasonableness issue.
Reasonableness is a pretty fuzzy standard I know. I guess we could quantify it with decibal levels and such y’know above X decibals unreasonable bla bla. My neighbors in L.A. blasting mariachi music at 3 a.m. that can be heard a block away pretty obviously unreasonable. It could be one of those “I know it when I see it” standards. I mean it sort of already is. What I was really going for in this was actually some of the more diffuse externalities like pollution or noise (which you asked about).
Comment by Phil on 13 November 2007 at 12:33 pm:
When it’s just a case of one person’s personal pleasure interfering with another’s (as in most of the examples on this thread), we usually seem to be able to get along using our personal standards of reasonableness. We have much more conflict when one person’s plan to make money interferes with a someone else’s enjoyment of life. This is partly because large-scale projects that affect a lot of people, or ongoing activities that affect the neighbors all the time, are more likely to be for making money, but mostly because people with a plan to make money seem to be perfectly willing to do things that most people would never consider doing for fun.